Leaving College to Start a Business

Our colleagues on the You’re the Boss blog have put up an interesting post about two young entrepreneurs who dropped out of college to start a new business that helps people get into college.

The 20-year-old chief executive Max Hodak and the 23-year-old finance chief Jason Mueller, dropped out to begin their business as a “temporary” move, following a competition season in which they won $4,500 and some honors but never took a grand prize. That dropout status is likely to be permanent now that their company, MyFit.com, has received venture capital funding and is operational, says Mr. Hodak, who would have been a junior biomedical engineering major at Duke this year. Mr. Mueller would have been a senior business major at North Carolina State.

As described by the author of the post, Lora Kolodny, “MyFit.com is a Web site, a Facebook application and a service that helps high school students and their parents predict and improve their chances of getting into a college where they will enjoy life and succeed.”

The service differs from traditional methods by analyzing more than grade-point average and test scores, considering “social maps” online and real-time data about a student’s lifestyle, goals and interests. The company also aims to give admissions boards a more efficient way to find, recruit, filter and accept applicants who are best matched for their colleges.

Interesting premise for a web site, but the “percentage chance” of entry it gives the applicants is worthless compared to the marketing data it gives to the schools – the site’s business premise is to create a database of ‘hot’ prospects for schools, who may or may not be considering their institution. Then, they will sell the information to the schools marketing departments. In turn, the schools get to target “high yield” candidates with mail and email, increase their applicant pool and raise their rejection rates. What a joke. Just another marketing gimmick preying on the uninformed and unsuspecting. Go back to school kids and do something of real value with your lives.

It sounds like a fascinating business model, and it could be fairly successful with students and their families.

I would suggest that admissions boards themselves will quite pointedly not use it, since it would take the human element out of their goals and might threaten to make portions of their own work redundant.

Curious and Scott – It is pretty funny when you think about it, and I respect your skepticism.

However, I’ve worked for several start-ups and almost dropped out my senior year from Michigan while trying to start up my own company. I’m now admittedly on the MyFit team and they’re really smart, driven, hard-working guys (and girl). It takes a lot of bandwidth to follow your dreams, and the landscape of secondary and higher education is relatively outdated. The majority of thought leaders in academia will tell you the same thing, and we’re trying to make it better for everyone.

G. – the symbiosis of humanity and technology is something we are very much aware and respectful of. You make very valid points that are on the minds of decision-makers in almost every industry. Generally following the hierarchy of knowledge (or knowledge triangle – data, information, knowledge, understanding, wisdom – education will be one of the last industries to be “threatened” by technology.

Thanks for the consideration and would love to continue the discussions.

Chris, given that the landscape of higher ed is relatively outdated, why create another company whose goal is to direct more students into it? Wouldn’t it make more sense, and create far more social utility, for you and your colleagues to devote your drive, hard work and bandwidth to helping devise/implement a more contemporary model of higher education? I’m afraid I don’t see how an entity that is essentially a broker can make higher ed “better for everyone” by virtue of using a more nuanced matchmaking model. Is there more to the story?

Question: is the site listed above truly functional and user-friendly? I went to the site on a university computer yesterday, running Explorer, and some of the links were broken. When I went to one page in particular, a link to a previous page overlapped text. So I had my husband try it on Firefox, and his experience wasn’t any better. I tried again this morning–just in case there were temporary functionality issues on my end or the site’s end–but alas, the results were the same. If your webpage is one of the first things a potential client sees (regardless of whether or not the client is a parent, student, or university), I as a customer expect to see something that is at least functional on a basic level. Even though I’m not in the market for the duo’s services, I wouldn’t recommend the site based on my observations after visiting the site twice, and my husband’s experience with the site. Did anyone else experience problems?

Laura, its “vaporware”. The developers would be more generous and claim the site is “in beta”. They are using this article in the NY Times to try to raise money and the author of this article never checked the site for functionality and apparently never checked on the money they have supposedly raised either. So, he reports as follows:” their company, MyFit.com, has received venture capital funding and is operational, says Mr. Hodak”. I’d be willing to wager the $4500 these guys claim they won that they haven’t actually raised a dime, don’t have anything resembling a real business plan, don’t have enough money to build the database to support the site….but do have a family connection to the editorial department of the NY Times. Where is the Times ombudsman when you really need him?